The opening title sequence to Se7en is extremely effective as the message isn't quite clear, yet there is still an unsettling aura around it.
The editing in this title sequence is personally the key aspect to its effectiveness because there are a lot of shots that have been composed in a confusing and distorting way. I could argue that the shots were composed randomly as that would have had the same effect but that would ruin the effect.
We start off with an opening close-up shot of a tattered book which immediately lets me know that the film has some history behind it or that it could be some kind of diary.
We then get a series of creepy images flashing quickly across the screen and we then get introduced to the credits of the film playing over the top of the title sequence. The credits even have a scary effect as the words are very vague and jump around a lot which enhances the distortion. We then get shown some disturbing images of bleeding fingers and a blade, foreshadowing the future horror in the film. A lot of the shots include some sort of a diary and a lot of writing which makes me think as if somebody is keeping track of something. I also saw that somebody was highlighting some key words such as "transexual" and "heterosexual" as well as putting a line through the eyes of an image of a young boy. This makes me nervy because this person seems weird and perverted and I get the sense that this person is stalking children.
We start off with an opening close-up shot of a tattered book which immediately lets me know that the film has some history behind it or that it could be some kind of diary.
We then get a series of creepy images flashing quickly across the screen and we then get introduced to the credits of the film playing over the top of the title sequence. The credits even have a scary effect as the words are very vague and jump around a lot which enhances the distortion. We then get shown some disturbing images of bleeding fingers and a blade, foreshadowing the future horror in the film. A lot of the shots include some sort of a diary and a lot of writing which makes me think as if somebody is keeping track of something. I also saw that somebody was highlighting some key words such as "transexual" and "heterosexual" as well as putting a line through the eyes of an image of a young boy. This makes me nervy because this person seems weird and perverted and I get the sense that this person is stalking children.
The camera throughout the whole title sequence focused on close-up and extreme close-up shots. This was so that nothing was given away about the story or the who the person was and so an enigma was created. These close-ups also put me on edge because it forced me to look at objects very quickly and very up-close which seemed to take away my personal space and I felt very unsafe.
The music was very chilling as there was a constant tempo and it was quite high pitched which made it quite eery. The music blended well with the editing as it gave an overall thrilling feeling.
To add on to this cold, disheartening title sequence, the mise en scene is very clever because it forces the audience to focus on specific objects such as the needles, pictures, writing and the blood. As each frame comes and goes extremely quickly, the audience tries to focus harder in order to understand what is going on and therefore when the blood and needles are introduced, it has a bigger effect on the audience.
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